The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Sunday, January 27, 2013

No Mere Existence for Israel

by Andrew E. Harrod

Inauguration weekend has come and gone, and with it the preceding "No Blank Check for Israel"
rally on Saturday, January 19, 2013. Rally participants first assembled
in Farragut Square to hear various speakers and then marched through
adjoining streets to Pennsylvania Avenue between Lafayette Square and
the White House where President Barack Obama two days later reviewed the
inauguration parade. The central demand of the rally was to "condition"
American aid to Israel upon respect for human rights. Although
presented in terms of human rights, the rally's speakers and
participants cast grave doubts on the willingness of Arabs in the Middle
East to make peace with a Jewish state of Israel now having survived
over 60 years of conflict.

An amateur video of
the rally available online (I appear viewed from behind at 6:00 wearing
a light blue sweater and khaki slacks) clearly indicates the
participants' sentiments towards Israel. The master of ceremonies for
the event, Radio Rahim,
for example, condemned American support for Israeli "war crimes"
perpetrated against "innocent, defenseless people" as well as, for good
measure, "genocide." Rahim later warmed up the crowd with chants of "No
to the dark side, no to apartheid." Rahim suggested that American
support for such Israeli "apartheid" flowed naturally from an America
founded upon racism in which a "racist ideology still works through the
veins of the system." Continuing this racism meme two days before the
Martin Luther King holiday, one of the event speakers, Phyllis Bennis of
the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), cast American-financed Israeli
security policies in terms of a "triplet of evil" of racism, poverty,
and militarism opposed by King. Although Bennis described Israeli
"apartheid" as distinct from its infamous South African namesake, Israel
still deserved this appellation, as there "people who are Jews are
privileged" and both cases "are in violation of international law."

Also
making an appearance accompanied by his wife Cindy was Craig Corrie,
the father of Rachel Corrie, who died on March 16, 2003, when an Israeli
army bulldozer crushed her while she protested the destruction of
Palestinian homes (the Israeli military and judiciary have
ruled the killing accidental, not intentional, as alleged by the
Corries). Corrie compared sending military aid to Israel in the name of
peace as "making about as much sense as sending four cases of beer to a
fraternity to encourage sobriety." An introductory webpage
for the website of the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace & Justice
founded by her parents, meanwhile, describes Israel in terms of
"apartheid" as well.

Other speakers were universally hostile to Israel and its continued American aid. Rev. Graylan Hagler of Washington, DC's Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ condemned
that there had been a "silence for too long" while "business machinery"
continued "to grind down the hopes of people" in the Palestinian
territories as a "corporate press" looked away. While Martin Luther
King, meanwhile, "had a dream, Obama has a drone." Philip Farah
of the Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace (WIAMEP)
said that the rally was about "people who do not know how to say no to
war." In case anyone was confused by the rally's message, Najla Said, the daughter of Edward Said,
declared that the "facts are simple" in the Arab-Israeli conflict while
comparing civilian casualties during Israeli military action to the
Newtown, Connecticut, shooting. Rahim as well stated during one of his
"dark side" chants that "apartheid here is Israel, just in case you
didn't know."Examination of the crowd indicated that they would be receptive to the speakers. Copies of the Socialist Workerwere
available for the taking on a handout table. One sign held by a rally
participant called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a "war
criminal" while another sign listing the internet address of Occupy AIPAC declared "America First, Not Israel." One individual wore a National Lawyers Guild hat while someone from the other side of the political spectrum wore a Ron Paul button. Members of Code Pink, one of the event's organizers, were also present in their trademark color.

Shelley Fudge from the DC chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace,
another event supporter, spoke of Israeli "Judiazation" of Jerusalem,
prompting one rally participant to cry out "Arianization." During the
march to the White House, the demonstrators chanted "Viva Palestina/Long
live Palestine" along with "Free, Free Palestine" and "Resistance is
justified when people are occupied."

Personal
interviews with rally participants during the march and on Pennsylvania
Avenue did nothing to change impressions of the rally. Asked about an
average annual American aid of $2 billion since the 1979 peace with
Israel to Egypt, the second largest American aid recipient after Israel,
for example, one Palestinian-American noted that Egypt's much larger
population meant that Egyptians per capita received much less aid than
Israelis. Left out of this reply, though, was any understanding of the
American interest in such aid, as opposed to that of the recipients.
Indeed, as David Meir-Levy has analyzed in various online articles at FrontPage Magazine,
America reaps many benefits from aid to Israel, in contrast to the more
questionable merit of aid bestowed on many Muslim-majority nations such
as Egypt. Discussions of per capita international aid to Palestinians
being significantly larger than the post-World War II Marshall Plan in
Europe, meanwhile, merely brought the response that the Palestinians
had nothing to show for this aid not because of Palestinian misuse but
because of Israeli destruction.

Most
surprisingly, rally participants seemed to question the very existence
of Israel. Another Palestinian-American participant in the march
rejected any reference to Jews as a people with a historic homeland in
Israel, seeing them merely as diverse adherents of a religion scattered
across the world who had imposed themselves as foreigners upon an Arab
territory. My initial Palestinian-American conversation partner
described Zionism as a "fanatical religious movement" that supposedly
disrupted a tolerant, multi-faith Middle East and provoked in turn the
development of militant Islam. Accordingly, these Palestinian-Americans
as well as other participants in the march found nothing shocking in my
references to the May 27, 2010, statements by the Lebanese-American journalist Helen Thomas that Israel's Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go home" to Germany and Poland.

The
overall result of the rally was to leave a pessimistic impression upon
any objective observer concerning future prospects for Arab-Israeli
peace. All rally participants showed no reservation about demonizing
Israel with comparisons to German Nazism, American racism, and, of
course, South African apartheid. Yet as the pro-Israeli Committee for
Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) has documented in detail, many allegations of Israeli mistreatment of Palestinian Arabs both within and without Israel are unsubstantiated.

The reality of Israeli-Arabs in particular, Karsh's colleague Daniel Pipes discovered in Israel,
is that they are "intensely conflicted about living in a Jewish
polity." While these Arabs resent the inherently Jewish nature of Israel
expressed, for example, in a Jewish "Law of Return" allowing global
Jewish immigration at will in Israel, they appreciate the domestic peace
and prosperity of Israel's free society in which Arabs have obtained
considerable societal success as equal citizens. In the end, Karsh notes
that Israeli-Arabs "enjoy more formal prerogatives than ethnic
minorities anywhere else in the world." Consequently, Israeli-Arabs
"immediately voice their indignation" when Israeli policymakers suggest
transferring Israeli-Arab towns to any new Palestinian state as part of a
peace agreement involving Israeli-Palestinian territorial exchange.
Palestinians living in East Jerusalem who enjoy Israeli social benefits
and unhindered travel throughout Israel also show a preference for
becoming Israeli, and not Palestinians, citizens in the future.

Such
factual nuances apparently did not disturb the demonstrators in
Farragut Square, who had clear black/white understandings of Jewish
perpetrators and Arab victims. Although many in the crowd would claim to
limit their opposition to Israel to nonviolent means analogous to those
used by the mainstream global anti-apartheid movement in the past, the
crowds' sentiments would not rule out a group like Hamas resorting to
force against Israel. While Israeli uses of force always incited
condemnations of "genocide", "ethnic cleansing", "war crimes", and
"terrorism" from various rally participants, no one appeared to
recognize any terrorism on the part of Arab forces in the region. While
crowd participants complained about aid to Israel, they seemed to have
no reservations about aid to terrorism-supporting groups like Hamas and
the PA or the now MB-dominated Egyptian government.

Such
views went in tandem with an abiding rejection of Israel's legitimacy
as a free Jewish nation-state even after over 60 years of its successful
existence despite all adversity. If people in Washington, DC, supported
by 15 left-leaning Christian organizations,
can hold such views, the Arabs in the region must have even more
negative opinions of Israel. Future peace prospects for Israel must be
bleak.